It's that time of the year when unemployed new graduates begin to feel the anxiety and pressure of the job search, which is more competitive than ever. This process may be difficult and frustrating to some, but others are engaging in new and bold strategies every day to get that extra step up needed to land a position and start a career. At Slingshot SEO, we were lucky enough to find such a candidate.

Robert Williams, an adventure racer and new SEO Consultant at Slingshot SEO, was recently one of the many on the job hunt. In the fall of 2010, he was a public relations and marketing graduate from Butler University looking to start his career.

Williams made ends meet working as a Web consultant for a small business that was essentially a one-man operation. Part of the job was to provide SEO services, which he soon realized took more time and resources than one consultant could provide. Williams recalls, "I told my boss that he needed to hire a real SEO company to get the results he was looking for, and that's when I discovered Slingshot SEO."

After examining the Slingshot SEO website, Williams knew that this was the challenge he'd been searching for in his professional career. He applied through the website and unfortunately didn't receive any response. Williams remained determined and drew on his experiences during adventure racing.

"In that sport, you know there's going to be pain and suffering, but you know that you'll overcome those mental barriers and eventually cross that finish line," Williams says.

Williams assumed at the time (and he was 100 percent correct) that Slingshot SEO was using a corporate recruiter to find the best candidates on the market. "I looked at my LinkedIn profile and realized that it wasn't very relevant to SEO or social media marketing," Williams says. Using his Web marketing skills, he added keywords and phrases within the SEO and social media space that were relevant to his former job experience and education. Just three days later, Williams received a call from a Slingshot SEO recruiter and landed an interview for the same entry-level position that he had applied for on the website.

That position happened to be in my division at Slingshot SEO, and his interview will always stand out in my memory. I was highly impressed with his ingenuity and drive to land a position at our company. However, it was the story about how he had optimized his profile to be found by our company recruiter that impressed me the most.

My advice to recent graduates reading this column is to make yourself stand out and be relevant. Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and even Facebook have made this easier in recent years. Don't just polish your résumé for the position you want. Make sure you engage professionally in social media to increase your relevance and achieve your dream career. You can guarantee that recruiters and managers will search social media platforms, and even search your name on the Web, prior to an interview. So be sure to make this your time to shine!